


won’t need feathers to fly

by giallos



Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: Adapting To Changes, Baseball, Community: fandom5k, Cunnilingus, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fandom5K 2019, Light Praise Kink, Post-Canon, Vaginal Fingering, reconnecting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-04-06 09:19:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19059727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giallos/pseuds/giallos
Summary: Ginny makes up her mind that this year is going to be her last when an eighteen-year-old takes her signature screwball out of the park for a literal moonshot. Later, her catcher Niko jokes that it’s orbiting the planet now in an attempt to lighten the mood. It doesn’t help.





	won’t need feathers to fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elegantstupidity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/gifts).



> Happy [](http://fandom5k.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**fandom5k**](http://fandom5k.dreamwidth.org/) , [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/profile)[**elegantstupidity**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/elegantstupidity/)! 
> 
> Thanks to [](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/izzetboilerworks/profile)[**izzetboilerworks**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/izzetboilerworks/) for the beta.

Ginny makes up her mind that this year is going to be her last when an eighteen-year-old takes her signature screwball out of the park for a literal moonshot. Later, her catcher Niko jokes that it’s orbiting the planet now in an attempt to lighten the mood. It doesn’t help.

Or, well. Maybe it isn’t the massive bomb Ginny gives up, nor is it the statuesque, ripped eighteen-year-old girl—Jennika Hammond, a six-foot freak of nature—who hits it out of the park.

Ginny spins, kicking up dirt, and follows the high, arcing trajectory of the ball out of the park. She watches Hammond trot around the bases, slapping high fives with her coaches, a long braid swinging out from under the back of her batting helmet. It’s tied off with a bright, shiny bow in her team’s colors, reminding Ginny of how young she truly is.

And, for the first time in her career, she truly feels every bit her age.

Maybe it’s more the fact she’s thirty-four now, no rings to show for her career, and she’s just _tired_. Maybe it’s the fact a girl who was all of seven or eight when Ginny first took the mound just crushed her best offering. Maybe she’s tired of never winning. Maybe it’s all of it.

All that losing wears on you after a while. It’s what Mike had told her when he hung them up after her third year in the Majors. _Eventually that seemingly endless well of love you had for the game dries up._

Ginny hadn’t really understood what he meant at the time, but she gets it now. She totally gets it every time she drags her aching body out of bed at six in the morning to hop in the shower.  She gets it every time she drags her tired ass home at one in the morning, the grime of baseball covering every inch of her skin.

Eventually that well dries up.

And Ginny’s well is empty. Has been for some time, she thinks. Jennika Hammond didn’t drain that well, it was already empty. Ginny just hadn’t realized it until then.

She’s thirty-four now with two Tommy Johns on her ledger, one reconstructive knee surgery, no rings, and no life outside the diamond really. She’s given everything to baseball, and when has it ever given anything back?

So, yeah. Ginny is done. This year is it for her.

And then Mike freaking Lawson chooses one of the lowest moments of Ginny’s career to waltz back into her life.

***

Ginny’s going through the motions, like she does every spring. Like she has for the last—oh, she’s lost count now. It kind of sucks that she can’t remember the last time she actually loved baseball. When she was younger, at the beginning of her career, she used to wake up with dreams of baseball clinging to her memory like cobwebs, the smell of burnt wood and freshly shorn grass invading her nostrils. Now she wakes up every day, the thought of walking into the clubhouse sending her stomach tumbling and making her palms clammy.

Will there be more Jennika Hammonds in the clubhouse ready to push Ginny out?

Will there be more reminders that she’s not getting any younger?

But when Ginny shows up at the clubhouse and heads to her lockerroom, Mike, of all people, is waiting outside the door.

He looks good, his graying hair thinning somewhat, the beard thicker and more salt than pepper. He lifts his shades when he hears Ginny approach and flashes her a wicked grin that quickly softens into something more familiar and friendly.

“Old man,” Ginny says. Mike was only a few years older than she is now when they first met all those years ago. “What brings you down here?”

The last time Ginny checked in with Mike, he was freshly divorced—for the second time—from Rachel and making up for lost time in the Bay Area with his biological dad. Ginny was happy to hear he’d finally reached out and connected with not only his dad but his dad’s family.

That had been a year and a half ago. Ginny’s stomach twists with guilt that she’d let it go that long without reaching out again.

“Heard that ball Hammond hit’s still circling the earth,” he quips. “NASA’s classified it a—”

“Fuck off,” Ginny says mildly, unable to help a smile. “Stop talking with Niko behind my back.”

“I _am_ the Padres’ roving catching supervisor, you know,” Mike says, in a deep, booming voice in an attempt to make his title sound more glamorous than it really is. “Niko calls me for advice sometimes.”

“Don’t be putting ideas in my catcher’s head,” Ginny says.

Mike flashes her a grin, eyes crinkling. “Kid says you intimidate him. You shake him off too much.”

“He keeps calling for a cutter. I don’t throw a cutter,” Ginny snipes, motioning for Mike to follow her into her lockerroom.

She flips the lights and shuts the door gently behind her before collapsing in her leather recliner. Given all her recent panic over her age, she thinks she should be more embarrassed at having a recliner in her lockerroom but she doesn’t really care.

Mike pulls a stool over and sits across from Ginny. She kicks her feet up, resting them on his knee.

“Well, you’re gonna need _something_ ,” Mike comments as he pushes Ginny’s feet away. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Yeah?” Ginny asks. 

“The front office would like for you to start working on a knuckleball,” Mike says.

Ginny barks out a startled laugh, then stops when she realizes he’s not laughing along. “What’re you talking about, the front office wants me to work on a knuckleball. I’ve never thrown one in my life.”

Mike pulls up a messenger bag Ginny hadn’t noticed until just then and whips out a thin binder. “You’re getting killed on basically every pitch you offer,” Mike points out, as he flips it open. “Screwball isn’t…screwing. Fastball? More like slowball. And you never were able to get a grip on the changeup or the cutter.”

“So you’re basically saying I’m out of options,” Ginny says, sitting up ramrod straight now.

“The data is… It’s all right here, Ginny.” Mike holds out the binder and points to a graph.

Ginny peers down at it, frowning. She’d never really been one to pour over stuff like spin-rate or exit velocity or whatever else the statheads were coming up with these days. She left it to her catchers to crunch the numbers and distill the stats into something easily digestible. She’d never _had_ to worry about the numbers before, really.  

She looks up at him and passes the binder back. “Layman’s terms, Lawson.”

“Everything you’re throwing is getting hit,” Mike says, tucking the binder back in his bag. “The front office thinks it’d be worthwhile to start throwing the knuckleball to extend your career. Plenty of guys who started their careers throwing conventionally have picked up the knuckleball, with success.”

“Yeah?” Ginny asks, still not entirely convinced.

“Yeah. The only thing is…” Mike sighs, and Ginny’s stomach drops straight to the floor. Through the floor, to the earth’s core and whatever’s beyond that. “You’d have to go back to the minors. They want you to start in A-Ball and work your way back up.”

“Bullshit,” Ginny snaps. “No way in hell I’m going back to the Texas Leagues.”

“It’d only be for a little while. Just to work on things,” Mike says.

“I’m a ten-year veteran,” Ginny all but spits in disgust. “I’m not going back to the Bus Leagues to pick up a fucking _knuckleball_ on a whim.”

Mike sighs. “I told them you might say that.” He gets up, plucks a battered baseball out of her locker, and holds it out to her. “At least give it a shot in a bullpen session. See how it feels. Some guys are never able to pick it up. But at least try it out first.”

Ginny snags the baseball out of Mike’s hand, huffing unhappily as she rolls it in her hand. “I’m not going back to the Minor Leagues.”

Mike doesn’t reply to that. He only holds his hands up in a somewhat defensive gesture before slipping out of her lockerroom.

Ginny glares down at the ball as if the ball itself had personally offended her. She tosses it into the back of her locker and starts dressing for that afternoon’s game. 

***

A few days later, Ginny and Niko meet in the bullpen for her side-session. She notes, with some displeasure, that Niko’s toting both a regular catcher’s mitt and something that looks like an oversized leather oven mitt.

“Mike got to you too,” she says, in lieu of a proper greeting.

Niko grins a blinding smile at her, all brilliant white teeth. Of course he’s enjoying this.

“Is gonna be like catching butterflies, he say,” Niko replies, slipping his hand into the giant mitt.

Ginny sighs. She might a well try it, at least once.

After Mike had left, she looked up different grips online and fired a few texts—featuring photos of her grip—off to their pitching coach.

Now, she grabs a ball from Niko and digs her fingernails into the seams like she saw in the pictures she googled.

Niko goes to home plate and Ginny steps onto the mound. He looks ridiculous with that huge mitt on his hand.

She floats one in there that seems to hang in front of home plate for a full minute before diving down at the last second. Niko reaches for it but the ball ends up skipping away, in the dirt.

“Not bad,” their pitching coach chimes in. 

Ginny gets a fresh ball from her catcher and fiddles with it, fitting her nails into the seams again. 

Niko flaps that giant clownish glove at her.

This one sails high over Niko’s head and narrowly misses taking out the pitching coach standing not too far behind him. 

“Sorry, Glen,” Ginny calls out.

He gives her a thumbs up, then nods at her to keep going.

Ginny floats in a couple more, then uncorks a series of wild ones that have Niko scrambling all over the place. One of them pegs him in the cage of his mask. Luckily for Niko it was a knuckleball and not a fastball, or else he might have ended up with a headache for his troubles.

When it’s all over, Glen comes over to Ginny, a clipboard tucked under one arm.

“Not great,” he offers, “but not terrible either. There’s something to work with, at least.”

Ginny frowns as she tugs at the bottom of her shirt and uses the hem to mop at her brow. “Lawson says the team want me to start off in A-Ball.”

“Wouldn’t be forever,” Glen says. “What’d you tell him? Oscar and Al seem to think you’d do it.”

Ginny’s frown deepens, thinking about two-hour bus rides, tiny half-empty stadiums, crappy food and hotel accommodations, and even crappier pay. She thought she’d put all that behind her when she made the Majors. She hasn’t had to set foot in a Minor League park in years, not since her last Tommy John rehab. Back then, she still loved the game and, she’d believed, the game still loved her.

Glen seems to be looking at her like he expects an answer.

“I’ll think about it,” she says.

But even as the words come out of her mouth, she knows she’s going to say yes.

***

Ginny walks into the clubhouse in Lake Elsinore and all sound just comes to a complete, unnatural halt. Fresh-faced kids look up when she strides in, their eyes widening. It’s not every day a Major League star waltzes into Lake Elsinore, Ginny supposes.

She pops out her earbuds and lifts her sunglasses. There are more girls in the clubhouse than the last time she was in Lake Elsinore, as an eighteen-year-old herself. Ginny remembers when she was the only girl—not only on Lake Elsinore, but in the whole of the California League. Now there are—she counts, quickly—four girls in the Storm’s clubhouse.

One of the girls—tall, dark-skinned with a short afro—walks over to Ginny, her eyes wide with what is either shock or admiration.

“You’re why I became a ballplayer,” the girl says, thrusting out her hand to Ginny. “MacKenzie. MacKenzie Phillips.”

“I’m Ginny,” she says, shifting her duffel bag to her left shoulder and shaking MacKenzie’s hand.

“This’s so cool,” MacKenzie gushes, unable to keep from bubbling over in excitement. “When I was a kid I wanted to be the next, well, the next you.”

Ginny laughs, though she can’t help but feel slightly awkward with all the effervescent praise and attention she gets. “You don’t wanna be the next Ginny Baker,” she says, with a wry laugh. “Being the next Ginny Baker includes a lot of elbow surgeries, a blown-out knee, and a slower-than-sin fastball.”

“Hey, Baker!”

Ginny’s head snaps up just in time for her to get an armful of Tommy Miller.

“Miller?” Ginny gives him a quick hug, then steps back to get a look at him. “I didn’t know you were coaching in A-Ball! It’s been a minute, huh?”

Tommy grins at her, reaching up to tuck his hair behind his ears. “Yeah, it sure has, hasn’t it? Never imagined you’d be in my neck of the woods again.”

“So, you’re the pitching coach around here?” Ginny asks.

Tommy’s grin widens as he nods. “Yep. You’re gonna be sick of me by the time you’re done here.”

“Oh God,” Ginny groans.

Tommy just slaps her on the shoulder, lightly. “So, I think I need to see this knuckleball of yours.”

***

It helps to have a couple familiar faces in Lake Elsinore, in Tommy and his wife Tessa. Their little boy—well, he’d been little the last time Ginny saw him—is in high school now, a star pitcher for his varsity team at only fifteen. Their daughter is pitching on her Little League baseball team, and Tommy glows as he talks about both of them over dinner Ginny’s first night with the team.

“How about you?” Tommy asks. “You still with that tech billionaire? Noel or something.”

Ginny laughs and rolls her eyes as she tosses back a slug of cheap beer. “Oh, God no. It was Noah, and that’s so three boyfriends ago.”

“What about you and Mike?” Tommy asks.

Ginny chokes on a mouthful of beer and doesn’t miss the _look_ Tessa gives him as she hands over a wad of paper napkins. 

“What about me and Mike?” Ginny asks, once she’s done coughing up a lung.

“Wasn’t something going on there? I thought…” Tommy trails off when he notices Tessa glaring at him over her beer.

Ginny pats herself on the chest. “How did you even hear about that?”

“Blip got it figured out,” Tommy says.

“And he told you?” Ginny frowns.

“I mean, like… Just in passing,” Tommy says, looking guilty for having brought it up.

Ginny sighs. She and Mike had only had that one almost-kiss, but then he didn’t get traded. And Ginny was still unwilling to budge off her “no teammates” rule.

She hadn’t loosened her stance until a few years ago, when her boyfriend at the time—a rival pitcher for the Diamondbacks—ended up getting traded to the Padres at the deadline. Ginny didn’t want to end the relationship with Francisco, so they’d just dated quietly until the end of the season. He signed a free agent deal in Boston later that winter and neither of them were really keen on trying a cross-country long distance thing, so it’d just sort of ended. The last Ginny heard, Francisco had ended up marrying a Red Sox sideline reporter.

Ginny had had to adapt and change. She supposes that’s what she’s doing now. Just in different ways.

She stirs her pinky in her glass of frothy beer, thoughtful. “I guess after it didn’t happen that one time, we just sort of…put it aside.”

“Ah,” Tommy says.

“What do you mean by that?” Ginny asks, narrowing her eyes.

“What do I mean by what?” he asks.

“ ‘Ah,’” Ginny echoes. “You sound like you got something on your mind. Spit it out.”

Tessa takes that moment to get up and collect their plates, leaving Tommy and Ginny to have it out. Over what, Ginny can’t possibly imagine.

“You know he ain’t with Rachel anymore,” Tommy points out.

“Are you trying to matchmake us?” Ginny asks.

“No! Well, maybe,” Tommy says.

“ _Why_?” Ginny sits back and crosses her arms over her chest.

Tommy jerks his shoulder in an awkward one-shouldered shrug. “It’s just, me and Mike talk on the regular, you know. And he’s… Well, you come up a lot. Like, a _lot_.”

The perpetual frown Ginny feels like she’s been wearing on her face since the team asked her to go to the Minors to perfect the knuckleball just deepens. She’s pretty sure her face is going to freeze like this.

“Are you saying—what _are_ you saying, Miller?” Ginny asks.

Tommy sighs and drag a hand through his long hair. “I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’...”

“Tommy,” Ginny warns, narrowing her eyes.

Tommy swallows nervously, his Adam’s apple visibly bobbing. “Neither of you are on the Padres right now, technically. So you wouldn’t be teammates. And he’s been pretty down and out since Rachel left him again. And I know how he feels about you.”

Ginny sits back again, processing this. Not only has she been sent to the Minors to relearn her craft and, hopefully, rediscover her love of pitching, Mike also has been harboring feelings for her for the better part of a decade?

This is a lot to deal with.

“I should probably get going,” Ginny says, getting up from the picnic table and pushing her seat in. 

Tessa steps back out onto the deck just as Ginny is trying to make a hasty getaway.

“Is everything all right out here?” she chirps pleasantly.

Ginny rubs a hand over her face. “I gotta get back to my hotel room. Gotta be at the ballpark early tomorrow morning.”

“Well, it was nice seeing you again, Ginny.” Tessa gives her a brief hug.

Tommy offers to see Ginny out and wait with her for her Uber.

“Hope I didn’t make things weird back there,” he says while they wait on the porch.

“You didn’t,” Ginny says, and she mostly means it. “It’s just a lot to deal with right now. My career’s hanging in the balance and now this stuff with Mike…”

“For what it’s worth, I think this’s the right decision,” Tommy says.

“What is?” Ginny isn’t sure if he means baseball or Mike.

“Coming back here, picking up the knuckleball. You get a handle on the knuckleball, everything’ll fall into place,” he says.

Ginny offers him a shallow smile. If only she had an ounce of Tommy’s confidence in her ability to perfect the knuckleball.

*** 

True to their word, the Padres bump her up a rung in the organizational ladder, back to the Texas Leagues, and to the Amarillo Sod Poodles. When Ginny was last in Double-A, they were the San Antonio Missions. How time flies. She’s not even entirely sure what a sod poodle is.

Her first day with Amarillo, she sets up shop in her hotel room. She’s sick of living out of hotels. She lived out of hotels her first three years in the Majors, until she felt secure enough to use some of her savings to get herself a condo not too far from the park.

Living out of a suitcase, going from hotel to hotel, makes her feel like she’s eighteen, nineteen again. Even Jennika Hammond, an actual teenager, isn’t living out of hotels.

Ginny’s just settled back in bed and pulled up some video of different pitchers and their knuckleball grips when there’s a loud rap on her hotel room door.

Sighing, Ginny puts her laptop aside and gets up to answer it.

Mike Lawson grin at her from the other side of the door, a Whataburger carry out bag in one arm.

Ginny arches an eyebrow at him. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” she asks, stepping aside and waving him in.

Mike sets the bag on the dresser and turns to face her, still grinning. “Front office’s pretty happy with your progress,” he says. “It usually takes most guys a whole helluva lot longer to pick up the knuckler than what it’s taken you.”

Ginny lifts her eyebrows at him, pointedly. “I’m not most guys.”

“I know, I know,” he says. “But still. It’s taken you only a few weeks to pick up what it takes some guys months to get. Some never get it.”

“I don’t like not knowing where the ball is going,” she complains, flopping onto her bed. She lifts her head. “You can just knock my stuff off the other bed if you want a place to lie down. Or whatever.”

But Mike squeezes next to her on her bed without a word, all warmth and familiarity and a light whiff of delicious cologne.

Ginny pretends she doesn’t notice how good he smells.

“That’s kind of the thing,” he points out, as he settles back next to her. He tucks his arms beneath his head and crosses his legs at the ankles. “You don’t know where it’s gonna go, but neither do they.”

“But neither does Niko, then, either,” she adds.

“That’s why they give him a glove the size of my ego,” Mike jokes.

Ginny rolls her eyes and slugs him lightly in the chest. “Ha ha. Very funny.”

“Admit it, you laughed _just_ a little bit,” Mike says.

Ginny grins up at him and pinches her thumb and forefinger together. “Not even a little bit.” 

“Not buying what you’re selling, Baker,” Mike says.

She’s suddenly very aware of how close they are, how she can feel his warm breath skittering across her cheek. He’s close enough for her to touch. 

Ginny looks up at him; his dark eyes are as clear as the summer night sky. “Mike,” she says, thinking about the conversation at Tommy’s place.

“Gin,” he says back, shifting closer.

Ginny hears her papers flutter to the carpeted floor, soon followed by the thunk of her laptop. She tries to get up to grab it, but Mike just rests a hand lightly on her arm and she stops squirming.

“What are we doing here?” Ginny asks.

“Catching up on lost time, I think,” he says.

“I’m still with the Padres,” she points out, even as she drags her fingernails down his arm, slowly. “You’re a coach.”

“But not for the Major League club,” Mike says, and he does have a point. Damn him. “I’m not gonna try and talk you into something you don’t wanna do, Gin. But there’s no conflict of interest here. At least, not for me.” 

Ginny sighs. She wants to, so badly. But her career’s at a crossroads, and she just doesn’t know.

Mike must sense the indecision because he leans away, just a bit, as if to give Ginny space to breathe. “Whatever decision gets made here, it’s your choice,” he says. “I’m not trying to put pressure on you or pass off the responsibility here. Just that—”

“I know,” Ginny says.

It had been her choice the last time they came to this crossroad too, hadn’t it? Mike had always put the ball in her court. She’d never felt pressured by him, she never has.

Ginny reaches out, snags the front of his plaid shirt, and pulls him close, slotting their lips together. Their noses bump, making the fit slightly awkward, but they eventually get it right, their lips meeting, parting. Ginny deepens the kiss, using a little bit of teeth on his bottom lip that gets him panting into her mouth and grinding against her thigh.

She presses back against him, fingers still knotted tightly in the front of his shirt, rutting up against him almost desperately.

She feels one of Mike’s hands palm at her hair, tugging it out of her rubber band and letting it spill across the pillows. Mike lifts his head to pepper kisses all over her jawline, beard scratching against her cheek and lips and neck. 

It feels like they’ve both been waiting over ten years for this.

Ginny parts her legs to fit Mike securely between them. He doesn’t even stop what he’s doing, his lips still on the soft skin between her neck and shoulder.

Mike pauses, hovering over her. “Gin, are you absolutely sure?”

She nods up at him as she rests her hands over his hips. “You’re the only thing in my life that makes sense right now,” Ginny admits, feeling her cheeks flush with heat. “My career’s in flux. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do what the team’s asking of me. But you’re here with me. And _that_ makes sense.”

“I am,” Mike says, earnestly, pressing a soft kiss against her forehead.

“So, yeah,” Ginny says, clinging onto him maybe just a little bit. “I want this. I want you.”

“Okay,” Mike says. She feels him press a kiss against her hair.

Ginny helps Mike strip out of his flannel shirt and jeans, and then he slowly—excruciatingly slowly—peels her out of her tank top and yoga pants. Mike settles back over her and resumes kissing every bit of exposed skin he can get his mouth on. 

Ginny feels his cock heavy and hard through the thin cotton of his briefs, pressing hotly between her thighs and this is it. They’re going to do this.

Mike slides away from her and Ginny blinks down at him slips down her torso, his breath brushing against her bare skin like a heated caress. He settles between her thighs and pushes them apart a bit more, his hands pale on her golden-brown skin. Then Mike ducks his head and licks her through her panties.

Ginny squeezes her eyes shut and clutches at the pillow beneath her head as Mike blows his breath hot across her damp panties before licking her through them again.

It’s so close to being what Ginny wants and yet not nearly enough.

“Come on, Lawson,” she breathes out, squirming underneath him.

“Patience,” Mike murmurs. He tugs her panties aside and teases her slit with his tongue, his licks still too damn light to bring her much relief.  

“I’m fresh out of patience,” Ginny barks.

Mike laughs, but that doesn’t spur him into acting any faster. If anything, it makes him slow down just to spite her. He teases her some more, swirling the tip of his tongue lightly over her clit. When Ginny arches her hips up, trying to press against his tongue, he just darts away from her. Ginny feels him huff a laugh against the inside of her thigh and she lets out a frustrated groan.

“You enjoying yourself?” he teases her.

“Dammit, Mike,” she sighs. 

He says nothing to that. He just dives back in and resumes lapping teasingly at her clit.

Just when Ginny thinks she’s about to burst, she feels Mike’s thick fingers slipping between her legs, parting her open. His beard scrapes against the insides of her thighs, and she trembles with anticipation. Ginny practically vibrates out of her skin with want.

When Mike slips a finger inside her, Ginny clenches around him almost involuntarily. Mike laughs and slides his finger away, leaving Ginny feeling empty and unsatisfied.

“Don’t worry, princess,” he murmurs. “Just getting you warmed up.”

Ginny opens her mouth to fire off a smart-ass response, but Mike replaces his finger with two of his fingers _and_ his tongue and Ginny forgets how to make words.

Ginny jerks against him, crying out, her fingers clutching at the sweat-damp bedsheets underneath her.

“Fuck, Lawson,” she hisses, hips bucking against him. 

“Easy there.” Mike presses her hips back against the mattress with a hand against her pelvis and he resumes feasting on her, lapping at her slit, thrusting his tongue inside her along with his fingers.

Ginny grabs at air, blindly, before her fingers slide into his thick hair. She bucks her hips again, rubbing against his tongue. His beard is rough against her sensitive skin, scraping her raw. She’s going to have beard burn in the morning and she doesn’t even care. It’s worth it. It’s so worth it.

Mike starts fucking his fingers into her, two at first, then he adds a third. He’s so close to scratching that itch deep inside Ginny, so close.

She’s so damn close to getting everything she needs. At least for one night. Baseball’s a whole other story.

Mike sucks lightly on her clit as he pumps his fingers inside her, and Ginny nearly shatters apart underneath him. Somehow, she manages to hang on to the last scraps of her resolve as he devours her like she’s his last meal.

“Fuck, Mike,” Ginny gasps, twisting her fingers in his hair.

Mike murmurs in response, sending vibrations through her overheated skin.

Ginny thrusts her hips against his tongue again and he pushes her back down, pinning her hips against the mattress with one hand. He picks up the pace of his thrusts, like he can sense Ginny isn’t too far off from the edge and he wants to push her over.

“Whaddaya need, Gin?” he murmurs again, his breath hot on her skin, his beard scraping the inside of her thigh.

“Need to come,” Ginny grates out.

“C’mon, Gin. You can do it,” Mike says, the movement of his arm nearly a blur as he pumps his fingers in and out of her. “I believe in you.”

Something about how he says it— _I believe in you_ , like he really means it—tweaks something deep inside Ginny. She feels her orgasm building in a wave of heat that rises and rises as Mike thrusts into her, hard and fast and perfect.

Ginny’s mouth drops open, soundlessly, as her orgasm crests and she starts trembling against Mike.

“That’s it,” he says, soothingly. “You’re so close. You’ve got this, Gin.”

Mike’s gentle encouragement is what does it. Ginny just lets go and heat envelopes her as her orgasm breaks like waves against the beach near her home. Ginny presses back against the pillows and arches off the mattress as she comes, clamping Mike’s arm between her thighs.

She falls back on the mattress just as another wave overtakes her and pulls her under. Ginny claws at the sheets as the second orgasm wrings a strangled cry out of her throat. Then everything coalesces inside her, between her thighs, in a burst of heat.

After, Ginny lay on the bed, blood pounding in her ears. She feels Mike shuffling next to her, slipping his hand away from her. When she opens her eye, she sees him with his fist wrapped around his cock.

“Come here,” Ginny rasps, reaching for him.

“What?” Mike almost seems surprised as she rolls onto her stomach and knocks his hand away.

Ginny darts down and takes the head of his cock into her mouth, wrapping her first around what she can’t fit. Mike jerks against her, but he’s still careful not to be rough, his fingers stroking in her loose hair.

It doesn’t take him long before he’s spurting into her mouth. Ginny swallows—it’s never really been her thing, but she feels like it tonight—and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. Then Mike cups a hand to the back of her neck and draws her up, pulling her in for a kiss. He doesn’t seem to care about the taste either. He just wants his mouth on hers. 

They separate, panting, Mike’s hand big and warm on the back of her neck.

“How’re you feeling?” Mike asks.

“Like I could conquer the world,” Ginny says, with a light laugh.

Mike grins at her. “I always knew you had it in you.”

Ginny laughs and pushes him in the chest, throwing her full weight against him and pressing him back into the mattress. She climbs on top of him and gives him a soft kiss, as Mike’s fingers lace together in the small of her back. 

“Guess I just needed reminding,” she says, kissing him again.

Mike reaches up and tugs at a curl of her hair. “Turns out you didn't need a magic feather to fly. The magic was in you all along,” he teases.

Ginny rolls her eyes and then rolls away from Mike. “You’re lucky I like you so much,” she scolds him gently, whacking him on the shoulder. “Comparing me to a cartoon elephant.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, propping himself up on his elbow to watch Ginny as she tugs on some fresh clothes. “I am.”

Ginny looks over at him as she pulls a T-shirt down over her head and steps into some shorts. “Me too,” she says, smiling warmly at him.

 Mike beams at her and pats the empty spot next to him. “Now get over here and let’s go over some scouting reports.”

*** 

Ginny strides out of the bullpen, her jacket slung over her shoulder, Niko by her left elbow. He’s got that giant mitt with him; it looks more broken-in since the last time she saw him. 

It’s hard not to feel like she’s lost most of her season to the damned knuckleball, spending almost the entire summer in the Minors perfecting it. But Mike just reminds her that she’s right on track, and “some guys never make it back.” She doesn’t find it as reassuring as she thinks he means it to be, but hey. 

Ginny’s back in the Major Leagues, she’s got a full post-game spread waiting for her in the clubhouse just calling her name, she’s got her own bed with its two-hundred count sheets, and she’s got Mike Lawson rooting for her behind home plate.

When Ginny nears the Padres dugout, she pauses for a moment to seek Mike out before she locks eyes with him through the netting behind home plate. 

He nods to her, his lips quirking in a smile, and then Ginny nods back.

She pops into the dugout and settles in her usual seat at the end of the bench, close to the water cooler. 

Everything feels pretty much the same as before—except for Ginny. 

The sizzle of anticipation is back in her bloodstream. The butterflies feel at home in her stomach, kicking up a ruckus.

God, she’d missed how it felt to be excited about baseball. It’d been so long she almost forgot how it felt. But listening to the buzz of the fans, as she plucks up a stray baseball and tosses it from hand to hand, brings it all back. 

When the public address announcer is finished with the opening lineups, Ginny and her teammates spill onto the field. The sky is a high, shimmering blue today, and the sun is warm on the back of her neck as she steps onto the mound, digs her cleats in, and gazes in at Niko. 

The umpire barks, “ _Play ball!_ ” 

Ginny reaches into her glove for the ball, fits her nails along the stitches, and digs in. 

Niko tugs at his cup; he doesn’t even bother putting down a sign. He and the guy at the plate and everyone in this ballpark know what Ginny’s going to throw. 

The knuckler floats in there then dips right down. The umpire flinches, then stands up out of his crouch. 

“ _Strike!_ ”

Ginny settles back on the mound, toes the rubber. 

The buzz has settled into a low hum. And the butterflies that had attacked Ginny’s stomach earlier have dissipated.

Nodding to herself, Ginny reaches back into her glove and wraps her hand around the ball. It's solid in her grip, familiar and reassuring.

Ginny rocks back into her motion, pivots, and lets the ball go.


End file.
